Since the dawn of the computer age, computers have evolved and become more and more powerful. In our present day, computers have become indispensable in many fields of human endeavor including engineering design, machine and process control, information storage and retrieval, and office computing. One of the primary uses of computers is for information storage and retrieval.
Database systems have been developed that allow a computer to store a large amount of information in a way that allows a user to search for and retrieve specific information in the database. For example, an insurance company may have a database that includes all of its policy holders and their current account information, including payment history, premium amount, policy number, policy type, exclusions to coverage, etc. A database system allows the insurance company to retrieve the account information for a single policy holder among the thousands and perhaps millions of policy holders in its database.
Retrieval of information from a database is typically done using queries. A query usually specifies conditions that apply to one or more columns of the database, and may specify relatively complex logical operations on multiple columns. The database is searched for records that satisfy the query, and the records are returned as query result.
Graphical querying interfaces have been developed that help a user to query a database by dynamically specifying search conditions. In this way, the user need not rely only upon a standard set of queries provided by an application. In addition, dynamically specifying search conditions enables the user to dynamically build queries based upon the most appropriate search conditions that may return the desired data. The user is typically provided with a means to dynamically select the columns of a database table upon which the user may like to execute a search. Once one or more columns are selected, the user is generally provided with input fields for each of the selected columns. The user may then fill in the input fields with the required search parameters and execute a search in the database to retrieve the required records.
Frequently, there is a need to add new records in a database due to organizational changes, new use cases and the like. The user may want to selectively add records to one or more columns. The existing graphical query interfaces enable the user to dynamically search a database for records but do not allow the user to generate new records in the dynamically selected columns. Thus there is a need for a system that may enable the user to generate records in the dynamically selected columns.